Tag: SEO

SEO is an incredible tool for any blog or content site that can drive traffic and increase your site visibility – when used well. But it’s also a rapidly evolving area that is constantly changing in terms of what works and what doesn’t. This means that using tactics that may have worked in the past might not get you results today. So what can you do to ensure that you use SEO in the best way possible for your business? Here are some tips and tricks to help you out.

Source: http://www.thebluediamondgallery.com/wooden-tile/s/seo.html

Avoid shoving keywords into your content

There was a time when SEO was all about loading your content with the maximum amount of keywords. Back then, content was stuffed full of keywords and content quality suffered. Not only were users put off by the terrible quality of the writing, search engines also started to respond. Today, search engines penalize “stuffing” SEO tactics and aiming to get as many keywords into a post as possible will actually mean your content performs worse.

Get the ratio right

Keyword stuffing might be out, but keywords themselves are not. So, when you write an article it’s important to add in the correct number of keywords. Recommended amounts are usually around 2-3% of your content. This allows you to create high quality meaningful content that includes relevant keywords but isn’t nonsensically stuffed full of them. A good way to structure things is to begin with SEO in mind. Too often, blogs will be written about one subject and SEO keywords will be inserted at a later date, which often leads to unnatural and unreadable content. The thing is, search engines favor well-written content, so writing well and avoiding heavy handedness can really pay off for your blog or website.

Never stop proofreading!

Ok, maybe never is the wrong word. But, make sure to proofread your content thoroughly as search engines penalize poor spelling and grammar. Even if you have a great writer, it’s always important to have a second set of eyes on each piece before you publish. And this can help with more than just minor errors. Having someone review a post can help weed out any ambiguity, sloppy writing or anything else that may be less appealing to search engines and potential readers.

Work on your comments section

SEO isn’t all about what you consciously and purposefully add to your writing. A lot of how your site gets ranked will be based on user-generated content (if you have it), and this can dramatically improve your ranking. Don’t have any user-generated content on your site yet? No problem – it’s incredibly easy to add. All you need to do is find a user-friendly and easy to install comments platform to encourage users to write their thoughts, opinions and more. And to make sure they get talking, use your content to ask questions, ask for engagement and even praise commenters who have made valuable contributions. When the comments do start rolling in, remember to respond to them. The best kind of user-generated content is a conversation, so grow your community by listening and responding to what people have to say.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is more important than ever and it is a crucial tool to leverage in order to help a business succeed. While there are many different marketing channels a company can choose, and multiple digital channels, SEO in many ways remains the foundation of a solid online presence. SEO has changed over the past few years but it isn’t going away anytime soon, so we’ve collected a few tips to make sure you make the best of it in 2017.

It’s time you invest more time on the content of your website. Research shows that relevant content is the most effective SEO tactic but it is also the most difficult to execute. Content that is interesting, engaging or fun to read is not longer enough, your content needs to be relevant and above all else, it must create value for your customers. If users find your content relevant and gain value from it, they’ll want to share it, and when they do your content will be seen on additional platforms, helping to drive more traffic to your website.

People like to share stories and information they like and trust, they share to get a word out about a cause or brand they care about, and they share in order to add value. 49% of consumers say that sharing allows them to inform others about products they care about and can encourage action or changing an opinion. Web content needs to be unique enough to make people want to share and talk about it. There are many ways to do this including creating a more personal tone and experience both through the type of stories shared and through the channels you choose to use (just think about how video and audio can help bring a more personal and trustworthy feel to your website compared to text alone).

We see. We click. We comment.

The main goal for any business is to attract users. According to Forrester, 93% of online experiences start with a search. The majority of search engine users are more likely to click one of the top 5 suggestions in the results page. This makes it all the more important to have effective SEO to optimize your website ranking and attract more customers.

Another way to raise your ranking by having the users leave comments. The more high-quality comments you have the more you will improve the ranking of your content. Leaving comments involves time and effort so it’s very important to make sure your comment platform has a seamless UX. A great alternative for comments is to try voice comments, this helps save users time and even go hands-free, while still being able to share their opinion. Using voice reviews can allow for a new kind of interaction as well as motivating the user to share what they think about products with their friends, once again spreading the word about the website and bringing attention to it. This is a win-win situation for the user and the website.

Heyoya is a game-changing comments and reviews platform that brings voice to e-publishers and e-stores, improving sales and user engagement by allowing readers to express themselves beyond the medium of text. Heyoya’s new Receiver plan allows for quick and easy below-the-fold monetization. Heyoya is a game changer for websites and is proven to increase brand affinity and the quality of user-generated content.

SEO refers to search engine optimization and covers all the technical and creative elements involved in improving site rankings and driving traffic to your website. This includes a lot of different things, from generating consistently great content, to the ways in which you structure your website and the links you include in it. Over the years, SEO has been evolving in more sophisticated and interesting directions, and today, the trends of voice content and voice searches are set to further change the world of SEO.

The evolution of SEO

There have been tons of changes in the world of SEO. Once, SEO was all about cramming in the correct keywords into a web page or blog. If you were an air-conditioning salesperson than you can bet the word air-conditioning would have featured roughly one thousand times in every sentence. Keywords were very much at the center of things. However, over time, search engine algorithms have become much more sophisticated and have learned to favor more natural types of speech. When Google released Hummingbird in 2013, it moved SEO towards more conversational content. In 2016, search engine algorithms have gone further, and content that is longer and more in depth tends to do better. Content with photos also consistently outperforms text-based content, and backlinks remain essential.

It is not just text and images that are rapidly changing the world of SEO. The increasing popularity of voice search means that today over 20% of mobile queries are voice searches. These kinds of searches are based on questions rather than keywords, and they are changing SEO. For one thing, content that is conversational or that answers questions (think FAQ style) are performing well. It’s also likely that instant answers will become more popular and feature as the response for a greater number of voice-based queries. However, this doesn’t mean that we should stop paying attention to typed searches. At the moment, a whopping 80% of all mobile searches are still text-based.

Voice content also changes things

Web site and blog content tend to be a mixture of text, video, and images. And while video and image content is incredibly important, and proven to help with SEO, audio-based content is the one to watch in 2016. The fact that people are using voice assistants more and more frequently suggests that the importance of voice content is also increasing. If you can’t look at your screen and can only voice search, then it’s reasonable to assume there are many times when audio content would be preferable to content that forces you to stare at your phone or laptop. And, as voice and speech analytics continues to improve it is only a matter of time before keywords and phrases in voice become an essential part of SEO.

Heyoya is a game-changing comments and reviews platform that brings voice to e-publishers and e-stores, improving sales and user engagement by allowing readers to express themselves beyond the medium of text. Heyoya’s new Receiver plan allows for quick and easy below-the-fold monetization. Heyoya is a game changer for websites and is proven to increase brand affinity and the quality of user-generated content.

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What started with Siri has expanded to other technologies like the Amazon Echo and Google Home in the smart home sphere, and personal assistant alternatives like Cortina, Viv and others. With a multitude of voice services on the marketing, different platforms are competing on functionality, breadth of knowledge, usability across devices and more. One of Siri’s issues has been its stark absence on Mac over the past few years, but thankfully that has all changed with the launch of Sierra. In any case, one thing is clear; as more people transition to using voice services and platforms, an increasing amount of voice content is being created. And this changes the digital marketing landscape and the way in which people search for and view content. As voice becomes increasingly popular as a form of media, so does voice search.

Source: medium.com

A change in the essence of search

With word searches, people have become used to typing in key words to find the content they are looking for. Marketers have based much of their content strategy on this and finding very niche goods or products have more often than not been a question of typing in the right key words. With voice, the way people search is different. Instead of honing into the key questions, voice searches are more conversational, largely based on full questions, and more reminiscent of what you would ask a real-life personal assistant. According to research the occurrence of the words “who” “what” and “how” in searches has increased 61% in the past year.

Marketing needs to be more conversational

This dramatic change in the way people are searching necessitates a change in the way brands, products, and services are marketed. In order to capture an audience that is searching for colloquial questions, your content must be of a kind that addresses those questions and does it in a conversational way rather than exclusively through key words and meta tags. And while it is always necessary to do customer research and build your marketing in a way that taps into your key audiences, in 2016 it might be worth researching the kinds of questions your target audience are asking. Ideally, your sites and blogs should be based on both traditional SEO keywords and semantic voice relevance (ie. voice-based questions and context).

Increase voice-based content

While voice searches are mostly throwing up text-based content, with the increasing improvements in voice analytics it won’t be long before voice searches find voice-based content. To stay ahead of the trend and keep users on your site for longer, it is already worthwhile incorporating voice content into your website or blog. This can start out with something simple like voice snippets of your bio on your blog or a voice pitch of your best selling product. Ultimately, though, one of the best types of content is the user-generated kind, which is always perceived to be much more authentic than brand generated advertising and content. To harness both the voice and user-generated content trends, it’s worth exploring the world of voice comments and reviews.

Heyoya is a game-changing comment and reviews platform that brings voice to e-publishers and e-stores, improving sales and user engagement by allowing readers to express themselves beyond the medium of text. Heyoya’s new Receiver plan allows for quick and easy below-the-fold monetization. Heyoya is a game changer for websites and is proven to increase brand affinity and the quality of user-generated content.